keywords: Philippines

Many Australians have reached a point of believing that the difficulties afflicting Aboriginal communities demand the heavy handed, and often humiliating, approach. But the Philppine grassroots Gawad Kalinga model, based on 'the giving of care', offers a realistic alternative.

The idea of establishing a university in Palestine was first mooted during the 1964 visit of Paul VI. Today Bethlehem University has 3000 students, and has had 12,000 graduates since its foundation. Current vice-chancellor Peter Bray is well placed to lead it through its next phase.

Adventure and travel writing has long been a male domain. Sports and media guru Peter FitzSimons advises young men to broaden their experience, find their voice, and 'push through the hard yakka'. He says this advice is not for young women.

Eureka Street’s founding publisher Michael Kelly is one of the Australian Jesuits who had long discussed a journal of intelligent comment on topical issues in church and society. The models included long-running Jesuit publications overseas including America in the USA, established in 1909, and the The Month in Britain (1864-2001).

This week's headlines have been about elections in the UK, the economy in Greece, and justice and law in Australia regarding banning the burqa and monstering asylum seekers. The way these are played out leaves little room for love, altruism, forgiveness, restoration, reconciliation and freedom, and no space for grace.

'Like most politicians, she was driven by psychological angels and demons', writes musician David Byrne of Imelda Marcos, the former first lady ofthe Philippines. Byrne has written a 'musical' about Marcos' life. From the outset, he risks deifying a monster.

In June last year a solitary Uighur from Xinjiang province arrived in Phnom Penh seeking asylum. On 18 December he and 21 other Uighur asylum seekers were praying when Cambodian police entered their safe house and abducted them at gunpoint.

Significant agreement was achieved in Copenhagen on the present and future
forcible displacement of people because of climate change and
environmental degradation. Can global cooperation for the protection of vulnerable displaced persons be renewed to meet new circumstances?

If Hawke and Keating had failed to act on economic reform, the opportunity cost would have been devastating unemployment during the GFC. It is not difficult to imagine the opportunity cost of the priority Rudd is giving to his own popularity over reforms that are now urgently needed.

Cory Aquino will be remembered for the role she played in the Philippines' People Power Revolution of 1986. It was the first instance in modern times where civilians, not the
military, unseated a corrupt leader without even a call to arms.